CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
C HAPTER T WENTY- S IX
Dawsyn keeps her eyes ahead, looking for the changes in direction, where the Chasm might open at any moment to reveal its end. The light turns to softer greys at first and then yellow. The air warms further and she laughs in quiet hysteria to feel sweat slip down her spine.
Upon the next corner, the light has taken on a bright orange hue, but still it does not reach the tops of the Chasm’s walls. Specks of black float on the air. They fall slowly down before her face and settle on her shoulders. She lifts a palm and catches one – a small flake that disintegrates in her palm.
Dawsyn turns to face the rest. They too are covered in it. Their heads and shoulders are speckled. Hector raises a hand to inspect the flakes in his palm and he lifts knowing eyes to Dawsyn’s.
Ash, he mouths to her.
“Where’d yeh s’pose this is comin’ from?” Salem asks. “Up top?” The man lifts his gaze skyward.
But Dawsyn does not answer. She has locked eyes with Ryon and sees the fear she feels.
She turns and barrels on ahead, down the Chasm. If she stops a moment longer, she may not find the strength to move onward.
The air grows hot, then hotter still. The Chasm walls begin to reflect the sinister shifting of light she feared. Red and orange lick up its glistening obsidian surface. The ash swirls in whorls overhead.
The Chasm no longer sings or whispers to her. It does not muddle her senses with its ratcheting echoes. Now, it roars. It starts as an exhale, then builds into the moan of some deep earth-dwelling beast. The farther she creeps, the louder it becomes. There is a corner ahead. It glows red and hot in the distance. She can see the reflections dancing up the walls.
“Dawsyn!”
She hears, but does not heed. She is too lost in the growing noise, the intensifying heat, the drum of her heartbeat.
No, she thinks, her feet gathering momentum toward this last turn. No.
For she knows the gate to paradise does not glow red. It does not lick her skin with a burning tongue.
She coughs and squints her eyes against the sting of smoke, her pulse hammering, her mind still gripping false promises.
She hurls herself around the narrow corner and there she finds it, almost topples into it.
The end.
Around the corner, there is no path. It falls away, and Dawsyn’s feet catch on the precipice of its cliff. Here, her eyes squint, but this time it is not darkness that impedes her. It is the near-unbearable heat. The burning brightness of light.
“Mother above,” Dawsyn mutters shakily.
A clamour comes from behind, and she turns just in time to ward off the crush of the others, lest they push her over the edge. “Stop!” she shouts to them, holding up her hands.
But she needn’t bother. They have all frozen in their spots, having rounded that last corner. They stand stock still, gasping in awe at the sight beyond Dawsyn – at the end of the Chasm.
A lake resides fathoms below. It stretches in a perfect circle, the length of which Dawsyn would not hasten to guess. She can just barely see the walls on the opposing side, far in the distance.
But it is not a lake of water, or ice. It is a lake of fire. The molten rock churns and bubbles. Waves of red and golden fire collide and emit a terrible roar. Fragments of stone fall from the rock face and it sends a cloud of smoke and ash into the air. It cloys in the back of Dawsyn’s throat.
This is the end of the Chasm.
Not a green valley, untouched and unclaimed.
Not the collision of the Chasm walls, cruelly blockading their freedom.
No. The end of the Chasm is hell. It is the fires of the underworld.
“Mother,” Dawsyn hears and it is Tasheem who utters it, her hands hitting the earth before her, finally succumbing. “Mother… please !”
“It can’t be…” Esra says, and his voice is a whisper of what it was, the Chasm having stolen his verbosity, his very spirit. “No.”
“For nothing,” Hector says, sinking to his knees. “Was all of it… for nothing?” It seems he asks the sky. “WAS ALL OF IT FOR NOTHING?”
Then he is howling.
Every one of them sinks to the ground. They let their legs give way, having carried them far enough. They surrender there, at the path’s end, having travelled the length of it only to find a slower death.
To follow Dawsyn.
Her fault. Her fault.
Ryon lowers to his haunches, his thighs shaking. And then his fist beats against the ground. He roars and turns to launch his fist into the rockface, every muscle in his arm wired in tension. “FUCK!” he shouts, loud enough to crack Dawsyn’s bones.
She covers her ears. Mutes sound. She sees and hears her friends fall apart, but it doesn’t compare to her own insular destruction.
And there is a justice in that – that she should suffer most.
She hears her breaths. They are impossibly heavy, uneven. She feels the blood pulsing in her eardrums. She feels the weak tendrils of iskra singing its own requiem. She sees plainly that she has led every single one of these good people to their death.
This cannot be it. They did not survive all they have only to arrive here.
She did not leave the Ledge and escape the slopes.
Salem did not lose his home and Esra his flesh.
Tasheem and Rivdan did not abandon their kind.
Ryon did not put his faith in her, again and again.
Baltisse did not die.
She did not fall in love with a Glacian, just for it all to end here.
And then she hears it once more, the silky voice tempting her into this pit of fire.
Dealt are ends
Of pain or peace
Of withered cries
Of sweet release.
Strangled pleas
Or tender falls.
Inside our breast
Amid our walls.
The voices are louder here. They do not seem to exist within her this time, but all around. It fills the bottomless cavern, and when Dawsyn turns her head, it is to find the others silent and alert. Their eyes dart warily. They all hear it too.
Make your soul unto itself;
break the bone and cure,
For when you lie within the mouth,
The cost will be no fewer.
The roar of the voice grows until it is unbearable. Dawsyn claps her palms over her ears and closes her eyes.
Seal your eyes and sleep,
Still your lips, cease your breath;
Lie where sorrow dares not be,
Free from hands of death.
Dawsyn groans, sinking to the ground at the edge of the path. And before her erupts a sight to cower a titan. It ignites a fear so deep she cannot breathe. She cannot blink.
A hawk rises from the molten lake. Its colossal wings aflame.
Ash chokes Dawsyn, chokes them all. The hawk flaps its mighty wings, rising before them. It fills the enormous cavern, sending waves of heat to burn their skin with each downward swoop.
Yerdos, Dawsyn thinks.
Her limbs do not cooperate. She tries and fails to get her feet beneath her. She hastens away from the edge, pushing her heels frantically against the earth. An arm locks over her chest and hauls her backward.
Don’t go, says the voice. And once more, Dawsyn recoils from the volume, clutching her ears. But it is more discernible now. It is not the whisper of the Dyvolsh infection. This voice is pitched. Female. The words curl lasciviously. Goadingly.
You have only just arrived.
The hawk’s beak does not move and yet it seems to Dawsyn that it is the creature that speaks to them, toys with them. Its great beady eyes glint menacingly, alight with predatory lust and something other… something far more human.
“Yerdos,” she utters aloud.
In the flesh. Her wings swoop forward once more and heat thrusts them all backward. Dawsyn brings her forearm up to shield her face.
And you are Moroz, Yerdos says now, her voice rebounding. Come to find me.
“Moroz?” Dawsyn murmurs, confused.
I feel the cold within you. She continues, the words growing louder, more vicious. You bring its creatures to do your bidding.
Dawsyn’s eyes dart to Ryon, then to Tasheem and Rivdan, who stare on in horror. She suddenly recalls Rivdan’s story.
“No,” Dawsyn says once more, shaking her head frantically, emphatically. Though even as she says it, the iskra within her wearily rallies in the presence of a familiar foe.
I smell it, Yerdos says. You carry its foul breath.
“I am not Moroz!” Dawsyn calls, though her voice is far from sturdy. She cannot seem to give it volume.
It takes many forms, Yerdos continues. The cold is alive and well. It takes and withers everywhere it goes and the Mother lets it. She lets it roam freely. And I have been cast into these depths.
With each word, the temperature rises. It scolds Dawsyn’s cheeks and burns her eyes. She can hardly keep them open.
The Mother lets Moroz choke the life from this mountain. She punishes me!
Yerdos’ voice remains otherworldly, but there is a snarl of human anguish tangled in it. A deep, dark bitterness.
Dawsyn hears frantic scuffling behind her and turns to see Abertha retreating hastily on her hands and knees.
The hawk shrieks, the sound reaching Dawsyn’s marrow, a seismic wave crashing through her. A terrible quake sounds above them – the slow splintering of stone – and rock rains down. Boulder-sized pieces crash onto the path, blocking them in.
There is no leaving now you are here, Yerdos says.
Abertha pants wildly. A rock the size of her torso lies before her, an inch from her nose. She scurries backward into Rivdan.
You’ve come so far to find me. To vanquish me. There is nowhere to run.
“We do not come to vanquish you!” Ryon shouts.
But the hawk releases a gust of smoke from its beak, and they all bury their faces from it, coughing into the dirt.
I will take what chance our Mother offers me, Yerdos says now, her intensity growing. I’ve long prayed to meet you in the battlefield again. Come, Moroz.
The enormous hawk rises. It extends its wing. From the tips of its feathers, fiery ropes unravel, whipping toward Dawsyn and the others.
“Watch out!” Dawsyn shouts as the ropes strike. She rolls to the side, crashing into Ryon. But no pain comes. The ropes do not scorch her. When she looks up, she sees they no longer burn red. They attach themselves to the precipice.
A great wooden bridge has appeared. It stretches across the enormous pit and the fire it is made of slowly extinguishes. It creeps inward, summoned backward toward the creature that wielded it.
A creature once a hawk, who now takes the form of a human.
A woman stands in the middle of the bridge, and she glows every bit as brightly as the hawk did. Her hands are alight with the fire she collects. It courses across the wooden struts of the bridge and back into her palms, until it is gone altogether.
I can wage this war in the form of the humans, if that is your preference, Moroz, Yerdos says. Her voice still shakes the very walls. Come.
She speaks to you, Dawsyn thinks. “I am not Moroz!” Desperation leaks into her voice. “I want no fight with you!”
But Yerdos only laughs, and it sizzles against Dawsyn’s skin.
“What do we do?” Hector mutters, again and again. “What do we do?”
“Don’t move!” Ryon orders. Abertha has scrambled to her feet again, tears streaming down her face. “Stay down.”
“We cannot fight it, brother,” Rivdan says, and he does not try to keep the fear from his voice.
“Saint Yerdos,” Salem whispers. Dawsyn can hear his gruff voice, whispering to himself. “It is her.”
But the woman on the bridge no longer resembles a saint. She appears, from this distance, just a woman. She paces back and forth, her hands clenching. And though her hair glows fiery red and she moves with undue grace, she brings to mind an image Dawsyn has long since forgotten.
An image of Briar Sabar, stalking before their cabin on the Ledge, impatient for Dawsyn and Maya to return.
Dawsyn sees her guardian, her mother once more: red-faced, hands clenching, pacing with predatory deliberation. Dawsyn and Maya had been due back in the cabin by nightfall and the sun had retreated over the Face.
“Get inside,” she had said without further preamble. “And do not bother with excuses. One can only tease the thread of a woman so thin. You do not want to see me frayed.”
Yerdos looks like a woman frayed.
A vengeful mage, Esra had called her. Taken from her home by a king who slayed her clan and dragged her back to his castle. One can only tease the thread of a woman so thin.
Dawsyn rises unsteadily.
“Dawsyn! Stay down,” Ryon grunts, pulling on her wrist.
But, unbearably, Dawsyn slips his grasp.
“What are you doing? ”
Dawsyn does not quite know. She does not take her eyes from Yerdos’ form. “I… I must go to her.”
“Are you mad?” Tasheem splutters, choking on smoke. “Dawsyn, no!”
Dawsyn’s eyes water with the intensity of the heat. Her throat stings with each inhalation, but she draws breath to say what she must. “We’ve reached the end,” she tells them all, her eyes locking with Ryon’s. They implore her to stop. Beg her. “And there is no way out,” her eyes turn to the sky, so impossibly high above them. “And I’ve led you all here,” she takes in another rattling breath, and it is filled with the weight of regret. “And if we are all to die, better I make our souls right with this Saint before we meet the Mother.”
Before they can stop her or drag her back, Dawsyn hauls her ax over her shoulder, twists the handle in her palm, then closes her eyes and steps onto the bridge. A barricade tangles up the rock behind her the second her feet are free of the precipice. It is made of the same fiery rope Yerdos used to make the bridge.
Beyond the roar of flame and spitting magma, she hears Ryon bellow into the void. “Don’t you dare fucking die, Dawsyn! Do you hear me? ”
But this time, she cannot bring herself to promise safe return.
“I’ll leave you my heart,” she says. But the words are whispers swallowed in smoke, and they are left behind her, unheard.